"Mom, I need to stock up on spiral notebooks!" 

Back-to-school season has grown into one of the most anticipated times of year for the retail industry. Advertising spending reached almost two and half million last year, as retail stores competed for the consumers' back-to-school buck.

From television spots to digital display ads, retailers strive to position their brands ahead of competition earlier and earlier in the summer. With this year's advertising campaigns starting just after the Fourth of July holiday, the National Retail Federation forecasts that $68 billion will be spent on back-to-school shopping this year.

A tweet that Twitter wanted to hold back

Twitter has released its second quarter earnings, which fortunately surpassed Wall Street's forecast. However, Twitter's stock plummeted after it announced that they are experiencing the least amount of user growth over the past few years. While Twitter's upper management is floored by the numbers, they admit that it will take time before they start to see dramatic improvement.

The challenge for Twitter lies within converting non-users into users. The slowing growth of monthly users can be largely attributed to the fact that the platform is difficult to use.  In contrast, Facebook, which boasts about five times as many users as Twitter, is easy enough for even the not-so-tech-savvy user to navigate. More and more baby boomers are creating Facebook accounts every day. Twitter, on the other hand, must find a way to appeal to the mass market in order to achieve substantial growth.

Does your ad tell a story?

Think about a time when something happened that made a lasting impression. Where were you? How did it make you feel? What did you hear or smell? These are all things that make a memory or a story that is worth going home and telling your friends or family. In marketing and advertising, the ultimate goal is to make a lasting impression and stick with your customers long enough to influence their purchase decisions.

This day and age, it is very difficult for consumers to decipher a clear message from all the advertising clutter. Whether it's a commercial on TV, a spot on the radio or a digital display ad that follows them to each website, the challenge of establishing a connection to the customer remains. The key is to trigger something in their brains, and create an impact that sticks with them like a memory. Where were they when they saw your ad? What were they wearing? Who were they with? Your ad must tell a story relevant to your target demographic in order for them to deem your message valuable. When you remove the bells and whistles of all the creative elements to focus on pure strategy, your ads will catch more than your target's eye, and ultimately, yield the desired effect. 

Google+ Might Be Google-

Google+ might be on its last leg. Just a few short years ago, marketers thought that Google+ would grow to own the social media landscape. However, after the digital powerhouse made a couple of bad turns, users drifted away from Google+, and marketers shifted their gears toward Facebook and Twitter. While Google+ may not be buried yet, there are quite a few changes that Google has in mind that just might keep this social media platform afloat.

Google decided to no longer require Google+ users to use other Google products and plans on moving some features to other Google services. With this decision, marketers believe that certain elements of Google+ may stick around. For example, Google location sharing has moved to Google Hangouts and photos posted to Google+ have been moved to Google photos. By not forcing Google+ users to use other its other digital products, and no longer requiring a Google+ account to comment on Youtube, Google hopes to make consumers feel like valuable users as opposed to feeling like they're being used.

While majority of marketers would choose Facebook or Twitter as preferred media any day, there is something to say about the data Google+ has accumulated from its users. In the coming months, it will be interesting to see how the changes to Google's social strategy will impact not only its number of users, but also brands' decisions surrounding advertising on social media.